While an upgrade to the IBM Content Navigator was introduced in ICN 2.0.3, the configuration profile is not prepopulated with the previous profile details. End users will need to provide the correct previous profile details. The database design and schema has been changed to support the new features such as collaboration services, task manager, no repository, weblogic12.1.2 and so on and the upgrade database options should be understood clearly and then configured. This article will be helpful for existing customers as the configuration panel has been changed and any invalid value might corrupt the existing database and result in production down time.

Upgrade Design

For ICN2.0.2 and below, the configuration tool welcome panel has two options seen as below.

When users upgrade from a previous version to ICN2.0.2, they have to choose update, or reuse existing profile option; all tasks required for that profile are listed.

Users must take care to execute only the tasks required for an upgrade scenario.

This overhead of manually reentering the exact previous profile details was removed in ICN2.0.3.

Upgrade to ICN2.0.3

Before starting the upgrade process, it is recommended to take a backup of the existing profile. This can be done by copying the <Install_path>/configure/profile/profilename folder to some custom path (sayC:\profilename or /opt/profilename)

Note: Any reference to the previous profile can be done using the XML files present in this folder.

Application Server details – applicationserver.xml

LDAP details – configureldap.xml

JDBC details - configurejdbcecm.xml

1. After running the ICN2.0.3 installer on top of any previous release (2.0.1 or 2.0.1.x or 2.0.2 or 2.0.2.x), the following screen is shown after installation.

2. Clicking Next we get the below panel.

3. Launch the Configuration tool by selecting either of the below options

Selecting the Start the Configuration and Deployment Tool check box as above

Double Clicking configmgr.exe from path <Install_Path>/configure

4. As of ICN2.0.3, the configuration tool has three options: new, modify, upgrade profile as seen as below.

When you click on upgrade an existing deployment profile option, the below warning message is thrown.

Because in versions of IBM Content Navigator 2.0.2 and below, a Server.xml file was not created upon creating a profile, the upgrade is unable to populate the Appserver, Database details and so on.

Clicking Yes, opens the New Upgrade profile wizard prompting for profile name as below.

Provide the same profile name used in the previous ICN profile (2.0.2 set up).

Clicking next, prompts for the Appserver type.

A dialog box prompting for AppServer details is shown. Provide the same AppServer details as were specified in the ICN2.0.2 set up.

After entering the details as below, we can use the Test Connection button to verify the AppServer details.

Clicking next, we need to choose the same repositories as used in the ICN2.0.2 profile. For example, if we have configured IBM FileNet P8 and IBM Content Manager, we need to choose those two repositories in the Choose Repository dialog shown below.

Clicking next, the new upgrade profile is created.

After Clicking Yes, the upgrade profile is completed.

As stated in the panel above, clicking next will proceed to the next task to be executed in the wizard mode. For this set of instructions we will cover the manual configuration by clicking the advanced button and then click yes in the confirmation dialog.

Update FileNet P8 Client Connector task is an optional task. It has to be run only if there is an update to the IBM FileNet P8 Engine version. Right click the task and edit the Content Engine Server name and port and run the task.

Right click the Configure Your Database and Datasource task and click edit. Initially the properties such as Database Server will be blank as below.

Provide the database properties as used in the ICN2.0.2 profile. If you have a back up of the previous profile, you can open configureldap.xml to verify the values.

Note:

Current database configuration property must be updated with configured for IBM Content Navigator value is selected.

Run the script on your database check box should be selected

Click on Save and Run Task.

Right click the Configure the IBM Content Navigator task and choose Edit. Provide the schema name value as used in the ICN2.0.2 profile and then Save and Run task.

Right click Build the Web Application Task and choose Edit. All fields are prepopulated. Click Run Task.

Right click Deploy the Web Application Task and choose Edit. Choose the Appserver node and Server from the drop down. Save and click Run Task.

Bio: Mirnalini Karnakaran has over six years of testing experience in ECM domain and is currently responsible for IBM Content Navigator installation and configuration testing. She is responsible for the installer testing of IBM Content Navigator 2.0.2 and 2.0.3 release and all the fixpacks and LA releases in that stream. She has also tested other installers such as IBM Workplace, IBM WorkplaceXT, IBM Content Platform Engine and Rendition Engine and so on.

Yi Duan is an ECM Advisory Software Engineer in IBM Software Group, China. He has over 11 years of experience in software engineering. Yi joined IBM Content Navigator Quality Assurance team since its first release in 2011. He has extensive experience with IBM Content Navigator, especially in EDS. Prior to that, Yi worked in IBM Document Manager team for 6 years. Yi holds a Master degree in Computer Science from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications.

IBM Content Navigator has an extensible and pluggable framework that is based on the tier architecture and the usage of open standards such as JavaScript, HTML, CSS, and Java. It has powerful expandability. For a quick overview of the various options and framework, check out ONE UI - IBM Content Navigator as an application framework.

External data services (EDS)

EDS is an interface that IBM Content Navigator provides to access data from separate data sources. With EDS implementation, it is very easy for you to control the property dada and customize the behavior of the property. EDS is powerful. But in many scenarios, such as change properties order in the add dialog, you should implement request and response filter instead of using EDS.

Request and response filters

The request and response filters are parts of IBM Content Navigator extension points. In some instances, you might want to modify requests and responses so that you can modify the data that is being sent to or returned from the service. To accomplish this, you can create a plug-in to filter a request that is made to a service or to filter a response that is received from a service. EDS is a plug-in in IBM Content Navigator that is implemented by request and response filters. Often time, you would want to implement your own request and response filters. Other time, EDS can simplify your implementation.

When to use EDS and when to implement request and response filters?

Use EDS if you want to do some of the following tasks. Otherwise you probably need to implement a request or response filter:

Prefilling properties with values

Looking up the choice list values for a property or dependent property

Setting minimum, maximum values and length

Setting formats for properties

Setting property status, such as read-only, required or hidden

Implementing property validation and error checking

Where to use EDS?

According to the EDS implemented request and response filters, the following actions in IBM Content Navigator can be implemented:

Adding documents and folders

Checking documents in to the repository

Editing properties for one or multiple items

Editing item properties in the viewer

Using entry templates

Setting workflow step properties and workflow filter criteria fields

Creating or using searches

Controlling IBM Content Manager OnDemand search folders

If you want it in other actions, you probably need to implement a custom request or response filter.

For more information on EDS, response and request filters, check out the corresponding chapter in the new IBM Redbooks publication on IBM Content Navigator. In the book, we provide multiple examples of how to do these.

Tomas Barinais an ECM Consultant with IBM Software Group in Czech Republic. He has more than 10 years of experience in content management field. For the last eight years, Tomas focuses primarily on design and delivery of FileNet based solutions. His areas of expertise include solution design, ECM, and mobile development. Tomas holds a Masters Degree in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence from Czech Technical University.

IBM Content Navigator (ICN) has become the main UI of IBM ECM product and solution portfolio and increasingly, larger number of products and custom applications are adopting its unified framework for UI development. ECM solutions are now becoming unified by its look and behavior. But can your solution handle mobile platform? Are people asking you about mobile support for your ECM solutions? Do you want to extend your ECM solution to mobile users yet you are not sure about options you have? You come to the right place. I will try to answer some of your questions.

Mobile development options

You probably have heard about the native client for iOS that you can download from AppStore and use with ICN. This client allows you to quickly provide core ECM functionality to your users. However, it is obvious you cannot customize the UI appearance with it. But don’t forget, it still uses ICN backend, so you can modify the data that the client consumes or produces by using request/response filters or you can add your own mobile features where you can open your custom applications directly from within the client. And why not use UI developed in ICN framework?

Have you noticed how many websites are multi-channel these days, meaning adapting to the client and resolution the visitors use? When developing your ICN plugins, keep multi-channel in mind and decide about data representation directly for the device or to optimize your layout on the fly.

Or you can just start using Dojo Mobile with ICN JavaScript Model API and prepare special application just for your mobile platform. But guess what? You don’t need to start from scratch. ICN ships with IBM Worklight sample that you can customize for your needs. You will be surprised how many features are already there and how comprehensive it is!

IBM Worklight sample

What exactly is this IBM Worklight? IBM Worklight helps you extend your business to mobile devices. It’s an IDE, and it’s also a runtime framework you can use for your mobile applications development.

For ICN sample that ships with ICN, however, you do not need any additional runtime infrastructure. Running ICN server is enough.

Figure 1- Sample UI

You can pack the sample as a hybrid application that can be deployed directly to mobile device. In this case you would use Apache Cordova library as native shell for your web application. This allows you to access native device API using JavaScript.

Another option is to pack the whole sample as an ICN plugin. Then you don’t have to install anything on the device. Of course, you will not be able to access native device APIs.

Sample customization

Ok, that’s fine. So now how to start? With so many frameworks and technologies, wouldn’t it be difficult to get going? Not at all. Let’s take a look at the architecture of the sample. It uses ICN JavaScript Model API you might be familiar with from standard web development and just adds Dojo Mobile with MVC pattern.

Figure 2-Sample architecture

In the IBM Content Navigator Redbooks publication, we provide a guided tour showing how to add a new work feature to this sample and how to display a list of work items and their parameters. There’s a chapter there that helps you understand how the sample works and how to customize it for your specific needs.

Take a look at our video (coming soon) that demonstrates the customized sample and check out the IBM Redbooks publication for more details.

Amarjeet Singh Mundi is a client Solution Professional in the IBM Industry Solutions ECM Technical Team. He joined IBM in 2005 and has more than 13 years of experience in ECM. He is a Certified IBM ECM Solution Architect. He works with customers and business partners in adopting IBM ECM Solutions. Amarjeet is a regular speaker on ECM in customer events, conferences and seminars. He holds a Degree in Electronics Engineering and Masters in Business Administration from Symbiosis, Pune.

The most common question asked by customers is – “Does your product provide Import and Export capabilities out of the box?” For Hardware person, out of the box means, it will not come with the box, For Software person, everything has to come out of the box.

Why Customers need OOTB?

Zero coding, easy to configure, proven and tested, quick to deploy, address version upgrades, quick time to value and other customers are already benefitting from it.

What does IBM Content Analytics provide?

IBM Content Analytics provide Import and Export capabilities out of the box, Admin can Import CSV files. Import CSV feeds the data directly to Parse and Index Step. This is a quick and easy way to analyze content without going through the Crawl Step. Admin can also set options for Export after Crawl, Analyze and Search. Users can Export in CSV / XML with the user action from Search and Content Miner user interface. Look for the chapter on Import and Export in the upcoming IBM Redbooks publication on IBM Content Analytics.

BEFORE you read this chapter

How to analyze content from the information sources above and feed to the Enterprise Platforms below?

AFTER you read this chapter

Solution: Using IBM Content Analytic’s Import and Output functions to do so easily and efficiently.

Most of the applications accept data in open format like CSV and XML. IBM Content Analytics adds Database and Custom plug-in apart from exporting the data in CSV and XML. Figure After shows some of the applications that can consume data from Content Analytics in various stages of search and content mining. Deep Inspection is another Export Option where Unattended Facet Findings can be exported from Content Analytics which allows business analyst to closely monitor trends from the latest and weekly changing content data.

You can find out more about Import and Export and other functions and capabilities of Content Analytics from the IBM Redbooks publication.

Rainer Mueller-Maechler is a Senior IT Specialist with IBM Software Group in Zurich, Switzerland. He has ten years of software engineering experience in the ECM field including consulting, design, development, installation and integration with strong focus in client development for ECM systems. Rainer has been with IBM for three years and previously worked for IBM FileNet Business Partners for seven years. He holds a Master Degree in Computer Science of the University of Ulm.

IBM Content Navigator (ICN) is a ready to use state-of-the art user interface for enterprise content management (ECM) solutions. It is also a framework which enables you to customize and extend standard functionality. Imagine you have to build a Dossier Management solution (in German word: Aktenverwaltung) – Can you do this with ICN? – Yes, you can! – If you don’t know how or you just want to see a compelling sample of how easy and fast ICN can be extended and adapted to get a new custom solution, keep reading….

Imaging you go to a client and make a presentation about IBM Content Navigator, telling them great stories about an excellent cutting-edge user interface experience. And the client responds: Well, that’s really nice, but our end users are used to work with special views on the documents of our customers, that we call customer dossiers. The client asks if ICN can cope with that requirement and asks you to provide a user interface similar to the following – What would you respond?

Definition of Dossiers

The basic idea of a dossier is to get a structured view of the documents in your repository according to a primary order principle like, all documents of a customer or all documents of an employee etc. The picture above shows the dossier of customer John Smith. Technically the top level folder “John Smith” represents the dossier. It consists of

Properties like customer name, customer number, company

A folder substructure to organize the dossier’s documents.

How would you respond? Something like, well, that is a challenge and I gotta ask my service colleagues ?! - Ha, no - hopefully something like “Sure, we can!”

OK, now you have made your client curious and they will ask you to give an idea, how this could be accomplished. So the question is, what do we need beyond ICN’s standard functionality? This dialog is following:

Client requirements and your responses

What basic functionality and views does your client need for the dossier management solution?

Client: First, we want a function to create a dossier for a new customer. All dossiers must have the same folder substructure.

You: We will extend the upper toolbar and add a Create Dossier Action button, which opens a customized Add-Content-Item-Dialog, a standard ICN widget for adding items to a repository. We will reuse this dialog to add the top level folder of the dossier. Create Dossier Action

You: This Action will trigger a custom midtier service, which will create the subfolder structure of the dossier. Create Substructure Service.

Client: Next, we want a view to show the dossier similar to the screenshot above.

You: OK. We will use the feature extension point of ICN to provide a customized browse feature pane. The only functionality we have to add is setting the root of the folder tree to the top level folder of a dossier. Dossier View Feature

Client: OK. To open a dossier, we first need to search for it and then open it in the provided view to work on it.

You: Search functionality is provided out of the box. We define a dossier search which will find the top-level folder of the dossier by providing a specific folder class and search criteria like Customer Number.

You: The missing piece is an action which sets the found top level folder of the dossier as root folder for the Dossier view feature pane and switches from the search pane to the dossier view paneOpen Dossier Action.

What you will implement for the dossier management solution

At the end, you are proud of having made the client happy, come home and start developing an ICN plug-in that implements following extension points of ICN:

An Action for creating the dossier function (add the toplevel folder)

A Service for creating the folder substructure of the dossier

A Feature showing the dossier in a customized browse pane

Another Action for opening a dossier and showing it up in the dossier feature pane.

Finishing up, packing the plug-in into one single JAR archive file and deliver. Done! Wow – that was easy, yeah?!

If you prefer a detailed step by step guidance, read the IBM Redbooks publication on ICN. In the book, we will explain all the extension points of ICN and provide detailed instructions on how to implement this simple dossier management scenario for your client – who is hopefully patient enough to get the solution at the beginning of 2014…..

In the book, this plug-in is implemented for both IBM FileNet P8 and IBM Content Manager Repositories.

Ron Rathgeber is an Enterprise Content Management Software Architect working on the IBM Enterprise Records product in the IBM Software Group in the United States. Previously, he worked on the IBM FileNet Capture and FileNet WorkForce Desktop products. Ron has over 20 years of experience in the imaging and content management fields, working in the software development group. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Information and Computer Science from the University of California, Irvine.

IBM Content Navigator (ICN) is quickly becoming the client of choice for enterprise content management (ECM) applications. Many if not most ECM applications have integrated workflows to automate different processes and to ensure proper procedures are followed.

One of the key features of workflows are the step and launch processors. These processors provide the user interface that end users will see when performing a step in the workflow process. Since they are the interface that end users will see, they become one of the key factors to provide the overall workflow capability and for enabling end users to easily perform their tasks.

ICN provides both a step processor and a launch processor out of the box. These processors are designed to provide the capabilities that will be needed in many scenarios including:

Display the instructions for the step as well as general information about the step such as any deadlines.

Provide a property tab that will display the properties configured for that step.

Provide an attachment tab where attachments can be added or viewed.

Provide standard buttons for completing the step, reassigning the work, saving the work, and canceling the work.

If you have requirements to have a more customized step processor or need functionality that is not provided by the out of the box step processors, then you can easily create your own step and launch processors. The easiest way to do this is to create a step processor that is based on and derived from the existing step processor. This allows you to utilize the functionality provided by the existing processors and concentrate on providing the additional functionality needed for your use case.

In the IBM Content Navigator Redbooks publication, there is a chapter that describes how to extend the existing step processor by adding a Viewer widget. This allows the user to view the attachments in the same dialog where they are setting and viewing properties. This side by side layout is useful in many cases.

The high level steps for creating the custom step processor are described below.

In this step, you create a copy of the example step processor HTML file. You then modify this file to add a container for the viewer.

2. Create the new widget.

Next you copy the JavaScript file to create the new Viewer widget. This Viewer widget will display the ICN Viewer embedded in the step processor page. The startup code is modified to perform specific initialization such as creating the Viewer.

3. Modify JSP page.

Finally, you create a modified version of the JSP page to instantiate the new widget created in the previous step.

After you have created these files, deploy them to ICN, register them in the Process Configuration Console, and create a workflow that uses the custom step processor.

See the IBM Content Navigator Redbooks publication for details on creating a custom step processor.

Jane Singer works in the IBM Content Classification development team in the Software Labs in Jerusalem Israel. Jane leads the L3 support team for Content Classification. She has also worked in the OmniFind Enterprise Search L2, QA for Case Manager and Content Navigator mobile teams. She has written multiple DeveloperWorks articles and is the author of IBM Classification Module: Make It Work for You.

Users formulate search queries according to terms they are familiar with. Concepts that are used in documents are typically presented in a somewhat formal term. Users who perform search queries, however, typically use informal language to search for these concepts. There is no way to predict exactly how a user formulates his or her search.

One approach to deal with concept synonyms is to build synonym dictionaries and add terms to the index. Such an approach requires re-indexing, and can be expensive, in terms of time and index size.

IBM Content Analytics with Enterprise Search (ICAwES) V3.0 has new functionality which allows you to add query expansions at runtime, with no need for re-indexing. Each expansion consists of two rules, the rule for matching and the rule for expansion.

Matching rules can be based on keywords configured within the rule, regular expressions, or dictionary lookups. Each dictionary listing contains a preferred term and any number of synonyms, acronyms, etc.

Expansion rules can supplement the search (“monitor or screen”) or replace the matched term with dictionary lookup, regular expression, or keyword.

Document ranking

Some search result may contain a lot of irrelevant documents or “noise.” Document ranking can “improve” query result precision by “hiding” less relevant results from the user in pages he or she will never access.

A document can receive a boost score based on a range of ranking factors:

How the expansion rule is matched

The fields where the match occurs (matches in the title field may be more relevant than matches in the abstract field)

Aggregation: groups can be prioritized according to independent ranking (PDF documents ranked higher than text files)

Document ranking is based not only on relevancy to the user search, but also on the quality and usefulness of the documents.

For more information see the “Query expansion” chapter of the upcoming IBM Redbooks publication.

Jane Singer works in the IBM Content Classification development team in the Software Labs in Jerusalem Israel. Jane leads the L3 support team for Content Classification. She has also worked in the OmniFind Enterprise Search L2, QA for Case Manager and Content Navigator mobile teams. She has written multiple DeveloperWorks articles and is the author of IBM Classification Module: Make It Work for You.

Extracting meaningful bits of information from large bodies of unstructured text is sometimes referred to as “finding the needle in the haystack.” Often, finding these needles means that the context of the token needs to be analyzed. Implementing parsers that pick out these concepts can be quite complex.

However, some tokens are recognizable by their internal character makeup. Extracting them is therefore more straightforward, since there is no need to analyze the surrounding context. For instance phone numbers, social security numbers and product ID numbers are often distinctive to the eye and can be easily extracted.

In the upcoming IBM Redbooks publication, IBM Content Analytics with Enterprise Search: Discovering Actionable Insight from Your Content, this is just one of the techniques described for extracting new meaning from your free text documents. Have a look at Chapter 11 for more ideas on how to use IBM Content Analytics Studio (ICA Studio) to extract more information from your IBM Content Analytics and Enterprise Search collections.

In ICA Studio you can create a new annotation type based on character makeup, using the Character Ruleresource. These rules can include both explicit and abstract descriptions of the characters. By exporting the annotator to IBM Content Analytics Miner or Enterprise Search, you can add these new facets to the index and recombine with other product features.

For example, a code may be made up of both letters and numbers such as ID003543.

Or in some cases, characters and punctuation marks need to be explicitly defined in the format.

For instance US phone numbers contain parentheses, hyphens and spaces as well as digits:

1-800-345-5436

1.866.222.1818

(201) 465-3543

The character rules are stored in rule databases. To create such a rule set in ICA Studio:

Under you Resources folder, right-click on the Character Rules folder and choose New Character Rules database.

Name and create the database.

Double-clicking on the CharRules icon will open the database and the rule editor.

Let’s build an annotator to recognize the (201) 354-2343 format. In the rule editor add the character type Character Sequence and edit it:

In the Selection tab, open the Type list and choose the Character Sequence type. Click Add.

Expand the features and right-click on Covered Text. Choose Edit cover text.

Enter the punctuation value and click OK.

Note: You can insert multiple characters into the character sequence. For instance the closing parentheses followed by a space can be a single character token.

To enter the digits, from the Type list choose the Digit character type and click Add.

Note: There is an extensive list of useful token types in the Type list: currency signs, decimal numbers, lower-case, etc. There are also a number of different punctuation types.

For each of the digit types you add, you can define how many times the digit type will repeat. This can be an exact number, or a range. Right-click on the digit icon and select Repeats -> Advanced. In this dialog you can control the number of times the character type can appear.

When you have entered all the characters (digits and punctuations) create the new annotation:

In the Annotations tab select all the annotations by using ctrl-click.

Right-click on any annotation and select Insert Annotation.

Name the new annotation by appending the name to the class prefix:

com.mycompany.IT.USPhone

You can create multiple rules to recognize other valid telephone number formats (+1-201-454-5467, 212-456-4564, etc.) and assign them all to the USPhone type.

When you add this rule database to your annotator, all phone numbers recognized by your rules will be annotated by the same USPhone class.

The annotator can then be exported to the search/analytics server and be used as a field/facet in your IBM Content Analytics with Enterprise Search collection.

For more information download the upcoming IBM Redbooks publication and have a look at Chapter 11, IBM Content Analytics with Enterprise Search: Discovering Actionable Insight from Your Content.

Jana Saalfeld is a Certified IT Specialist with IBM Software Group Services Germany. She has eight years of experience in Enterprise Content Management (ECM) field and has been with IBM for nine years. She holds a Bachelors degree in Applied Computer Science of Cooperative State University of Stuttgart. Her areas of expertise include solution and application design, implementation, integration, and technical enablement within the ECM product suite.

So you want to extend IBM Content Navigator (ICN) to provide additional functions and features for your application? It can be done. ICN provides high extensibility through the plug-in option. You can easily add new functions and features without changing the ICN code. In order to create the extensions easily, your development environment can be enhanced through a Content Navigator Eclipse Plug-in.

Why Eclipse Plug-in for IBM Content Navigator?

The Eclipse Plug-in eases the creation of new projects for ICN Plug-ins and new External Data Services (EDS) implementations. The Eclipse Plug-in provides wizards to:

Create the whole ICN Plug-in project structure automatically.

Create and implement the Main Plug-in class.

Add the necessary libraries to your projects build path.

Add additional client side components such as Actions, Features, Menus, Menu Types, Viewers, Open Actions and Layouts through wizards and add the new components to the Main Plugin class.

Add additional server client side components such as Services, Response Filters and Request Filters through wizards and add the new components to the Main Plugin class.

Create your own EDS project through additional Configuration.

Using this extension within your development environment avoids project setup errors and makes it easy to get started with ICN development.

How do you install the Eclipse Plug-in?

Installing the Eclipse Plug-in in your development environment is very easy.

For pure Eclipse packages, you only need to add the Plug-in JAR files available from the IBM Redbooks publication, Extending and Customizing IBM Content Navigator. The JAR files are part of the downloadable materials for the book in the Eclipse dropins directory:

com.ibm.ecm.icn.plugin.202.jar

com.ibm.ecm.icn.facet.EDSPlugin.202.jar

For Rational Application Developer, the JARs should be placed in the plugins folder.

Now restart your development environment, and that’s it!

As there are two different JAR files, there are two different Eclipse extensions. On the one hand, the Plug-in creates new ICN Plug-in projects. On the other hand, the Plug-in adds an additional Configuration for Web Projects in order to create your own EDS application.

The following Figure shows the New Project creation wizard where the ICN Plug-in wizard can be selected. The EDS Configuration profile can be used within the New Web Project wizard.

Now you can start creating your own ICN Plug-ins and EDS implementations.

If you are not familiar with the ICN extension and customization options, check out the first BLOG entry from the reference list below.